Former Maine Poet Laureate Wesley McNair

2025 Poetry Craft Lab 

Wesley McNair has been called by poet Philip Levine “one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry.” He is the author of ten volumes of poems and twenty books, including poetry, nonfiction, and edited anthologies. McNair has held grants from the Fulbright and Guggenheim foundations, two Rockefeller grants for study at the Bellagio Center in Italy, two NEA fellowships, and a United States Artist Fellowship as one of America's "finest living artists." He has twice been invited to read his poetry by the Library of Congress, and has served five times on the Pulitzer jury for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Other honors include the Robert Frost Award, the Theodore Roethke Prize, an Emmy Award, and the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal, for his “distinguished contribution to the world of letters.” His poetry has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and 23 times on Garrison Keillor’s Writer's Almanac. It has also appeared in the Best American Poetry and over sixty anthologies and textbooks. In 2015 he was named as the recipient of the 2015 PEN New England Award for Literary Excellence in Poetry. McNair is the former poet laureate of Maine, and his new book of poetry is “Dwellers in the House of the Lord”.